Pioneers–Bing, Lennie, Brother Spare

In our final post of the day, we are going back to Bing Crosby’s recording of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” This song, written by Jay Gorney (music) and E.Y. “Yip” Harburg (lyrics), was introduced to the world on October 5, 1932 by Rex Weber and the Musketeers in (J.P. McEvoy’s) New Americana.

According to Wikipedia, Gorney said in an interview in 1974, “I didn’t want a song to depress people. I wanted to write a song to make people think. It isn’t a hand-me-out song of ‘give me a dime, I’m starving, I’m bitter’, it wasn’t that kind of sentimentality”. The song asks why the men who built the nation – built the railroads, built the skyscrapers – who fought in the war (World War I), who tilled the earth, who did what their nation asked of them should, now that the work is done and their labor no longer necessary, find themselves abandoned and in bread lines.”

Bing Crosby recorded the song, as we previously mentioned, with Lennie Hayton and His Orchestra on Brunswick on October 25, 1932.

We are replaying this clip to show you that, when Bing wanted to, he could sing as dramatic a lyric as any other singer. It is this mix of jazz rhythms and Broadway drama that made this era so vibrant.